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Tailpiece

by Harry Graham

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My son Augustus, in the street, one day,

Was feeling quite exceptionally merry.

A stranger asked him: ‘Can you tell me, pray,

The quickest way to Brompton Cemetery ?’

‘The quickest way? You bet I can!’ said Gus,

And pushed the fellow underneath a bus.

 

Whatever people say about my son,

He does enjoy his little bit of fun.

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The Second Awakening Of A Magician

by S.L. Dennis

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The evening show was over. From the flapping entrance of the circus tent a small audience trooped out into the windy darkness: a few couples drawing closer as they disappeared into the night; a string of tittering girls, arms linked, bubbling with excitement and glancing back over their shoulders at the group of noisy youths slouching behind; two or three smart people who had been sitting self-consciously in the special screened-off enclosure, grown-ups in whose hearts, perhaps, a delight in spangles and sawdust had lingered since childhood, and who, in spite of a feeling of disappointment after every visit, still returned to the fruitless search for the glamour of those dream days; and last but not least a straggling, shouting, ragged mob of urchins, sticky with sweets and oranges, most of whom had crawled under the sides of the tent and evaded with practiced ease all efforts to catch them.

Gradually the paraffin flares which had glared above the ring and sent a yellow glow into the sky through the taut canvas died out. The wandering hand-lamps disappeared. Lights began to gleam in the little curtained windows of the caravans.

Presently the door of one of the vans opened, and, one after another, three figures were silhouetted against the bright background of the interior as they stood on the little platform at the top of the steps and bade good-bye to those inside. Rain drifted over them like a silver veil. The first was a great hulking man with immensely broad shoulders and a soft cap dragged down at an angle over one eye. Then came another man, slighter in build and hesitating in movement, with coat collar turned up to his ears and a broad-brimmed felt hat. A small dim hurricane lamp swung in his hand. Finally a woman in a belted mackintosh and a close-fitting tam-o’-shanter pattered quickly down the steps after them.

In a shabby little restaurant, the three presently sat in ghastly greenish-yellow gas light eating their supper. The place was empty but for them and the flabby, sandy-haired proprietor, who was making coffee with the aid of something from a bottle and boiling water in a battered black tin kettle. They were used to the shabbiness of the cheapest eating-houses ; and they usually saw them at their worst, at the end of the day, hung with the stale fumes of bad tobacco and miscellaneous cooking. The very mirrors of the place were clouded with greyish-yellow condensation.

The woman sat next the wall, the big man opposite and the small fellow beside her. She jabbed her fork into a last, hard potato-chip, pushed her plate away and then, resting her elbows on the table, held her face in her hands, staring out of the window at the dim figures of two drunks reeling past on the pavement. Her eyes met for a moment the little yellow ones of the man opposite. His pupils enlarged and contracted; then she looked away.

“Vell,” said the big man, smacking his lips and speaking in the thick unctuous tone and with the unpleasant accent characteristic of him, “and so, Joe Skender, you’re going to Randall for a job when this show closes. Veil, I wish you plenty of luck, but I don’t zink you get much. Ze conjurors they not wanted. As I was saying, it is different for me, Georgio Guzelli, I have ze fame of my strength and, of course, a vay viz ze managers.” The man leered nastily. “Your vife, she will be O.K. Ze finest lady trapeze artist I know.”

“Oh, Randall will get me in somewhere,” replied the little man with a smile that was forced, for he knew in his heart that there was really little hope for him. It was true that there seemed no demand for second-rate conjurers. He only owed his present job to his wife’s friendship with this nasty half-breed. He’d fight the brute if he only had the strength. Nina despised him, a little weakling of a conjurer. It had been different when he was younger and had some cash. They were happy then while the money lasted. He had to admit he was a weakling, who had made nothing of the decent share of chances that had come his way. And now he was in too deep a rut to climb out of. He was always admitting that to himself, but did nothing about it. Gradually he had sunk from a good vaudeville connection. This was the lowest so far—a second-rate road-show, and that was closing now.

What a queer taste this coffee had! Out of the corner of his eyes Skender could see the other two watching him intently, though feigning not to. They’d drugged it probably. But what did it matter ? Things were bound to come to a real crisis one day. She would be sure to go eventually. How damned silly to waste time over drugs. Why not get up now and walk off with that lout’s great arm round her?

She was still with him when he blew out the candle beside the bed in their cold and dingy lodging-house room soon afterwards. He was very drowsy and had hardly time to cover himself with the clothes before mind and body lost contact.

Somewhere in the fuddled sleeping brain of Joe Skender, Star Magician, there was a department still in working order. The cells were fabricating there a queer multi-colored patch-work of memories which was presently hung up before his mind’s eye—and he dreamed. …

He was entering the little dark shop in a narrow backwater off Oxford Street, where in the old days he used to buy the apparatus for his tricks.

From behind a curtain at the back of the shop emerged the assistant who had always served him there. As this man leaned over the counter towards him and brushed aside a queer jumble of suspicious-looking india rubber vegetables, he noticed the extraordinary length and thinness of his fingers, little more than bones and skin. Yet the face which grinned at him in the old familiar way was chubby enough, though perhaps a trifle doll-like, painted and waxen.

“What were you wanting to-day, Mr. Skender ? ” said the assistant, without seeming to move a muscle of his face.

The answer was spontaneous, welling up suddenly and irresistibly from the very depth of his soul. “Strength— strength—I want to be the strongest man who ever lived. I want to break up Guzelli; break him with my hands.”

“I am afraid that is rather an expensive trick and scarcely suited to parlor performance.”

“I do not mind what it costs. I’d give anything you ask for it. It is not for the parlor in any case. I’m working on the stage now.”

That mask-like face still grinned. “The price of the trick with full instructions is . . .”

Skender did not catch the last word. “I don’t care what it costs,” he said. “I’ll take it.”

“Thank you very much, sir; I’ll just get you the apparatus.” The man went into a room behind the curtain at the back of the shop, and in which, as the curtain was drawn aside, a flickering reddish glow of firelight could be seen. He returned in a moment with a queer dark, shadowy thing hanging over his arm. It looked rather like a long, deep sack of black muslin with a dim, uncertain outline, though roughly a small man’s size in breadth and height.

“Here you are, sir. One of the neatest contrivances we stock, and, of course, fully guaranteed. Will you take it ? ”

“I’ve said I will, and I hope it works better than some of the things I’ve had from here.”

Skender saw the assistant let go the shadowy thing, which, instead of falling, moved towards him, flowing over the counter like a black mist. It seemed to hang round him for a moment; almost shutting out what little light there was in the shop, till that waxen grinning face became just a light splotch in the gloom. An instant more and his sight was clear again. Somehow he felt full of an extraordinary boisterousness. “Well,” he asked, “how do I work it?”

“Perfectly simple—see, here is an ordinary poker. I’ll tap it on the counter to prove it is solid—so. Will you take it now, please, and tie it in a knot?”

“Tie it in a knot ?” Skender took the “ ordinary poker.” It felt weightless in his hands and bent like a supple twig. The knot could be tied easily, though his hands seemed awkward and numb as he fumbled with this weird shadow of a fire-iron. But the shadow slipped from his hands and fell with a clatter on to the counter. The trick worked.

“Splendid. How much did you say?”

“Just this.” The assistant suddenly leaned across the counter and stretched out a long arm as thin and bony as his hand towards Skender and, before he could move, drew from his mouth a little white shining ball, which gleamed even in the semi-darkness like a most wonderful iridescent opal. “That’s all, thank you, sir. There cannot be change.”

Skender was glad to have got off so easily. “I call that good value,” he said. “ Well, I must be off. Send me your new catalogues, as usual.” As he opened the door to go into the street he turned and saw with an utter horror that pierced him like a dagger of ice—saw the assistant slip off his face with a bony hand, and there beneath was just blackness, nothing. The man hung up his face beside the other masks on the wall and, taking another down, put it into place. The long, pointed, sallow face, the little eyes that gleamed like the glint of fire on copper, and the two horns, were unmistakable. Skender fled into the street and into emptiness. He awoke.

The early morning light filtered greyly in through dirty tattered lace curtains. The horror that possessed Skender at the end of the dream still clung to him, and he was covered with sweat. But the strange boisterousness of supernatural strength still lingered, too. He turned over. His wife was sleeping; her dark head lay on the far edge of her pillow. So she had not gone!

He crept out of bed, and had immediately to sit down on the edge again. There had been a strange lightness in his feet when he stood up—his legs seemed no longer to have to support a weight. He was wide awake now, and horror and joy struggled for mastery within him. He moved ghostlike towards the fire-place, and it was extraordinarily difficult to do so quietly, as he could hardly feel the floor.

The poker twisted like a dowser’s rod, bending at his will; and going to the window for light he fumbled with the tying of a knot. He was shaking with joy at his strength. Snap. The thing broke. His wife moved and sat up in bed. He could see her dimly rubbing her eyes with one hand and with the other holding the clothes up to her chin. He came back to bed, and as he got in poked the pieces of metal underneath. He made up his mind that this power should be kept secret till the time came to use it. A blind lust and longing for revenge on Guzelli had driven out fear.

Ambition had begun to flow back into a faint heart. He suddenly realised that Nina had said something to him, but was now lying silent on her back close by his side. He felt that she was looking at him out of the corner of her eyes, and his arm went out to draw her unresisting to him. There was something of the old joy in her little cry as he kissed her.

The day passed in wild preparation for the evening’s show. Skender was planning the most remarkable act the ring had ever seen. Late in the afternoon, when the foremost grey tendrils of night were creeping down the narrow streets of the little town, he stole unseen into the “property” tent carrying over one shoulder a bundle of crowbars and lengths of gas-piping. A huge spherical iron weight dangled by a ring from a single finger. These things were hidden away under a pile of canvas sheeting.

Nina had been something of her old self to him early in the day, but now she seemed as cool as ever. Skender knew she must have been with Guzelli, and strained himself to the uttermost in resisting the temptation to show his strength to her before the evening. He had not been able to help “testing” the crowbars in the ironmonger’s, bending them as easily as if they had been stair-rods. The shopman started to address him as “sir” at once, and to the fellow’s breathless question he explained that he was giving the strong man act at the circus that night.

“I’d heard it was not much of a show, but you can bet I’ll be there to-night,” the fellow assured him, “I’ll give you some free advertisement, too, and tell my friends the stuff you do your act with is genuine.”

The blinding flares had been lit and hauled up into place on brackets two-thirds of the way up the great blue and red striped center-pole of the tent. The “band,” consisting of three sour-faced ruffians who played the cornet, trombone and drums respectively, and whose only uniform was dirty black braided jackets and peaked military caps worn on the backs of their heads, grumbled and spat as they lounged against the small rickety cart which served as a bandstand. In the stable-tent horses and little plump ponies were being groomed and decorated for the ring.

In the property tent, now in use as a dressing-room, Skender snapped on the dickey and ready-made black bow that turned his shiny blue suit into the “evening dress” in which tradition demanded he should perform. As he bent to pull on his coat he caught a glimpse through a tear in the canvas of Guzelli and Nina talking earnestly in a dark corner just by the ring entrance. They evidently thought they were hidden, and Guzelli took her in his arms. The magician’s anger strained in him like a mad hell-hound on a leash. He snarled and went across to where his iron was hidden. There he twisted the metal to try and satisfy momentarily his craving to break and tear with his hands—a lust which presently should be glutted when he fought with Guzelli. He’d bend him back just like the pipe he held. He’d tear him like a rotten sack. Then he’d take her away. They wouldn’t dare to arrest him. He’d laugh at their rifle bullets. He’d be the richest man in the world. And all this apparently for a little white ball bartered in a dream!

The ring-master beamed at a large audience as he came forward to announce the star turns. The ironmonger’s assistant had evidently been busy, for the fame of the new strong man had spread, and the feeble pitiful tumbling of the two old clowns who moved like rusty clockwork toys was interrupted by cries of “We want to see the big strong man,” “Where is Samson?”

A white horse with red ribbons threaded in mane and plaited tail and a red plume bobbing over his patient head cantered on. Nina in white breeches and a little red jacket was astride him. The drummer, cornet, and trombone redoubled their efforts to drown one another and the noise of the audience. Nina was “featuring ” in several acts—at first as a rather moderate but (with great rarity) shapely equestrienne, and then, later on, as a really fine solo trapeze artist.

Skender’s eye followed that pretty figure round and round the ring. He saw how her personality caught the crowd and heard shouts of “Encore” amidst the applause. He saw, too, her eyes gleaming at Guzelli coming on as she rode off, and curbed a surging desire to go and kill him there and then. She did not glance at him.

Skender watched the great giant of a man juggling with huge weights, a little screw of paper, a tennis ball; saw him drive a steel javelin a foot into the ground, burst a chain, break handcuffs and finally, his great trick, catch a heavy pole on the back of his neck and balance it there. The little conjurer grinned as he heard the voice of the irrepressible ironmonger’s assistant shout that he wanted to see a strong man and not a Glaxo baby. He grinned into Guzelli’s little bright eyes as he came off raging. The man lurched towards him as if to strike, but, meeting nothing but a continued grin, moved away mumbling. Skender stole out softly after him.

A “black art” table stood alone in the middle of the ring, looking very small and ineffective with its soiled velvet top. Hidden inside it were the guinea-pig and pigeon Skender regularly produced from a “borrowed” hat. The ring-master in his most emphatic tones, as if to make the best of a bad act, was announcing “Joe Skender, the Modern Miracle Man from the London Halls,” when a sudden roar of laughter drowned his bombast.

Framed in the painted and be-flagged canvas of the ring-entrance was an extraordinary’ spectacle. Guzelli without his gladiatorial leopard’s skin staggered there in the dirty white Roman tunic he wore underneath. He was as groggy on his legs as a thoroughly beaten heavy-weight boxer. But the most peculiar and ludicrous element of his costume was a large and battered top hat rammed down over his eyes and squashing his nose flat against his face. The powerful arms were bound tight against his sides by what appeared to be a metal pipe bent twice round him. Some unseen force seemed to be pushing him relentlessly into the ring. A band of metal similar to the one imprisoning his arms encircled his great bull neck and from this collar a long extension stretched back to the entrance. The laughter changed to a roar of applause and shouts when, after some yards of this rod had appeared, the power behind the scenes suddenly showed itself—a little man in a shabby blue suit and with the giant’s leopard’s skin over his shoulder. Like a badly fitting halo Guzelli’s gilded head-band rested on his ears. In one high-stretched hand the little man grasped the end of the metal rod and pushed forward the fallen gladiator. When well out into the ring he dropped the bundle of assorted ironmongery which had been tucked under his free arm and the monstrous weight that had dangled from one finger.

The crowd was silent. Here was a new sensation. It was frightened, yet completely fascinated by the extraordinary display of supernatural strength. Even the little boys on the back benches stopped sucking their oranges. Many felt something was wrong but the very strangeness the sight held them motionless, in the grip of a nightmare spell. Guzelli and the iron ball entered together in a juggling feat. The crowbars were flung so hard into the ground that they disappeared altogether. Guzelli, caged in bent piping, was balanced upside-down on Skender’s chin, was thrown up and caught, higher and higher at each throw, till at last he bounced against the canvas of the roof, making the whole tent shake.

Released from his bonds, Guzelli lay still on the ground inside the property tent. He was moaning a little and a trickle of blood ran down from one corner of his mouth. Skender grinned at his enemy, squatting beside him and with his face almost touching Guzelli’s. His revenge could wait now till he’d seen Nina—but the demon of the blood-lust could no longer be stayed.

Nina was standing in her white cloak outside the tent when he came to her and they walked together the few yards to the ring entrance. In the darkness she could not see his blood-stained hands. “I’ve got to go up on the trapeze now and I feel shaky,” she said, and then in a low trembling voice, “Joe, forgive me.” In a glow of triumph he took her in his arms. . . .

Limp. Her head fallen queerly to one side. Her mouth discolored. He let the body sink on to the grass and knelt beside her. He did not notice the knot of circus people who had gathered round, till someone asked him if she had fainted. “Crushed,” he whispered in an agony.

The crowd was clapping and stamping impatiently. Mad with rage, he dashed into the ring with gigantic bounds. The crowd roared with laughter at his sudden flea-like hops.

The great center pole caught his eye and he seized it with both hands. The tent shook as if a hurricane had struck it. One of the flares fell crashing to the ground in a pillar of flame. Panic crushed the crowd in its cruel blind fingers. Shrieks of the trampled, of those wedged beneath fallen piles of forms, mingled with the tearing of canvas. Skender tore the great pole from the ground and waved it, dragging out the guy-ropes till the vast canvas roof came flapping in upon the pole and the hanging flares. Flames roared up above him and he let go the pole. He was choking—burning. He clawed and tore desperately at the flaming canvas piled over him like a shroud of fire.

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Cold, grey, early morning fight shining dimly through the dusty pane above the door into the lodging-house hall. Two weird white figures in the semi-darkness, one deadly still, strangely huddled and wound tightly in a torn sheet, the other a woman in a night-dress. Three flights of stairs above a gap had been smashed in the flimsy banister of the landing outside a bedroom where was a double bed, empty but still warm. From a nail in the splintered woodwork hung a long cotton rag. The woman was weeping bitterly.

“I reckon,” said the landlady to the doctor, “I reckon the poor gentleman walked in his sleep. Mrs. Skender said she woke up this mornin’ to see him strugglin’ and staggerin’ out of the room wound up in his sheet, and before she could do anything, poor soul, he had fallen. I think, meself, he must have been awake when he fell, I heard him a-screamin’ just as the railing broke away.”

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Host Commentary

We at PseudoPod like to present a variety of monsters. Your classics like vampires and werewolves, your more eldritch and cosmic abominations and of course the all too human monster. Note this particular monster with the green eyes of jealousy.

There was a tweet a few months back (I’ll provide a screenshot in the show notes.  I’m not linking to Twitter. We are a horror podcast but we have limits). It shows a before and after photo of a guy who spent 12 weeks at the gym.  The before photo shows that he was a little chubby and healthy enough. I wish I had that body. The after photo shows him with a six pack, muscles everywhere, and like .3% body fat. There was a poll attached to this photo.  It asked which photo you preferred and what gender you were.  This being Twitter, you were only given two options. As the screenshot shows, nearly all the people who liked the after picture were men.

A lot of men had issues with this result as the reply to this tweet shows. Insisting that they know what women want and women are lairs. THr response to that lovely statement is that certain men have convinced themselves that their idea of hotness is shared by women because finding another guy hot is too gay I guess.

That attitude is what’s poisoning Skender.  He even admits that Nina was into him for his money. But does he ask for a magic trick splendid enough to get top billing? Does he ask for a trick to create more money? NO, he wants to be stronger Guzelli. Skender can’t conceive that Nina is with Guzelli because he has more money or maybe he’s nicer to her. It’s because Guzelli is an alpha chad and Skender is a beta cuck. WHen he finally gets what he wants, Nina, the supposed reason for all this, is almost an afterthought. He’s more interested in Guzelli’s humiliation.  She is instead crushed by a thoughtless Skender who has lost his humanity and is just a brute.

For a supposed sorcerer who deals in illusion, he is trapped in the illusions he has created for himself.  And that is the horror.